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simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
This is quite wow

Written by: www.livescience.com


Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.

This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

They don't know how they did it.

The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.

"At first, we were disbelieving," said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."

Thermonuclear explosions are estimated to reach only tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin; other nuclear fusion experiments have achieved temperatures of about 500 million degrees Kelvin, said a spokesperson at the lab.

The achievement was detailed in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world. It’s designed to test materials under extreme temperatures and pressures. It works by releasing 20 million amps of electricity into a vertical array of very fine tungsten wires. The wires dissolve into a cloud of charged particles, a superheated gas called plasma.

A very strong magnetic field compresses the plasma into the thickness of a pencil lead. This causes the plasma to release energy in the form of X-rays, but the X-rays are usually only several million degrees.

Sandia researchers still aren’t sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.

One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.

Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved, which is providing the machine with an extra jolt of energy just as the plasma ions are beginning to slow down.

Sandia National Laboratories is located by Albuquerque New Mexico and is part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).




eek

z machines, unknown power sources... This is clearly the sexiest thing in science since giant robots.

full link to story

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


jcrsGOLD Member
the floor is a sea of tigers...
404 posts

Posted:
oooo prudry arcs..... smile

Fine_Rabid_DogInternet Hate Machine
10,530 posts
Location: They seek him here, they seek him there...


Posted:
I saw this in an FHM a whiles back. I was all "oooooo".

But then I lost interest. Carmen Elektra was on the next page, ya see.

ubbangel

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."


simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
 Written by: FireTom

WOW - one step closer to exploit the power of lightning... ?



What? Electricity? We've had the hang of that for a while y'know...

This is Nuclear Fusion, eg. the power of the sun.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


Tao StarPooh-Bah
1,662 posts
Location: Bristol


Posted:
electicity? never heard of it.

don't trust all that newfangled rubbish.....

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.


FireTomStargazer
6,650 posts

Posted:
ubblol yupp - connect him to a set of wires and all of our energy problems are solved for the next millennium wink

But hey:

 Written by:

This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say...
(...)
It works by releasing 20 million amps of electricity into a vertical array of very fine tungsten wires. The wires dissolve into a cloud of charged particles, a superheated gas called plasma.



~ 2,2 million volts is in a lightning bolt (due to a lack of physical education I have no clue how amperes relate to volts and maybe I'm just talking rubbish)... however it (naturally) generates temperatures of 30.000 degrees celsius... eek

Errm Doc, how many volts does your bolt hold? umm wink

the best smiles are the ones you lead to wink


simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
30,000 degrees celsius eh? Thats a lot.
however this experiment produced a temperature which was 500 times hotter than that.

Lightning strikes generally have a peak current of around 10,000A, although currents of over 200,000A have been reported.

This experiment used a peak current of around 20,000,000A, which is 2000 times more than a typical lightning strike, and 100 times more than the most powerful strikes reported.

So this experiment is significantly more sexy than lightning.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


FireTomStargazer
6,650 posts

Posted:
WOW - thanks for making that clear to me, simian... I'm deeply impressed...

Thats surely is hotter than hell... devil

the best smiles are the ones you lead to wink


Ange_GSCGOLD Member
HOP's glowstick ambassador!!
128 posts
Location: Bay Area, California, USA


Posted:
I wonder if the number of dollars that thing cost to make comes anywhere near the number of degrees it can reach?

missegyptology: "I just remember beingall off balance and unicycling really fast down to campus and the arabic was all blurred on the page"

^When Linz pulls an all nighter before Arabic class^


MikeGinnyGOLD Member
HOP Mad Doctor
13,925 posts
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA


Posted:
So... Simian.

What about this discovery turned you on? I mean my reaction (and remember, I'm a trained scientist with a graduate degree) is...

"oh. neat."

And yet yours was obviously "OMFG, THAT ROXXORZ TEH B1G 111111!" (or something in that general genre of geeky ecstasy).

So...

Why?

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura


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